Season XI of the Champion Ladder started last Wednesday (Nov 29th) on all platforms. Official announcement.

We've received a lot of feedback about a tweak to the rules on PC/Mac. The Champion Ladder on PC/Mac is here, updated every season. For season XI, we have tweaked the rule concerning the "wildcard" teams, who are the eight teams qualified for the Champion Cup, in addition to the top team from each race.

In season 10, we qualified the "wildcards" as the eight second-highest ranked teams (maximum of one wildcard per race).
In season 11, we have changed this rule to qualify as "wildcard" the eight second-highest teams from a pool of set races that changes each season. This pool of eight "wildcard" races would cover all 24 teams over three seasons.

We received a lot of questions about the logic behind this change, I'll try to explain why we're interested in it.

Why did we change the wildcard rule?

Let's talk about the goals of the Champion Ladder:

To provide a matchmaking environment where there are fewer concessions.

To create a competition among each race to get to the playoffs.

To provide a diverse, safe and fun environment.

Points one and two are easy enough, and I think we've largely done that. Hardest to achieve is the third. Diversity in match-making environments has traditionally been very skewed. It has always and will always be the case: bash teams will always be played more in general.

In order to achieve that team diversity that we would like, there is a need to incentivise playing different races for people who would otherwise not do so. The best way to do that is to structure the Ladder part of the competition which provides the playoff spots accordingly. There are a number of ways to do that.

If we're purely looking for the "best coach", we could simply take all the matches a coach plays regardless of race and rank them by that. The problem here is that it is a strong incentive to play the strongest teams: Who would play as 'flings, even for one match, if every match counts? It's a huge disincentive to diversity.

So we need to look at "best teams". We could do that as simply the top 32 of the ladder, but again we'd see a lack of diversity of the races likely to qualify.

So we take "the best team in each race". This makes the ladder competition intra-race rather than inter-race, and it's important to remember that is the principle that we are working with. Even if you're 'flings, you're competing with other 'fling teams rather than with WE for the playoff spot, and if you want to try a different team than your primary attempt to qualify then you can do so. Seems like the best solution: it also gets around any need for seeding since the ladder is not between races but within them.

So assuming we take the "best team in each race" route, we need to work out how to do the wildcard thing. Wildcards matter as every one that each race gets is a 100% increase in the chance of qualifying. It's effectively another eight places on top of the 24 already going to qualify, and as the number of wildcard slots increases, the more value they have in the overall competition. With eight wildcard slots the chances of a top-two or top-three performing race getting one of those slots increase considerably relative to when there are three such slots. That, again, does not help with diversity.

So how do we choose them? For the same reasons as for why we chose "best team in each race" it's better to preselect the eight races rather than have them fall out of what would effectively be an eight-team "best team" qualifier, even if we limit it to one per race. This is an intra-race tournament, not an inter-race tournament. The inter-race tournament is the playoffs.

Furthermore, if we pre-select the races and cycle through all 24 then we have a "three-season era" over which period every race has four teams qualify for the playoffs.

We understand that having a qualified team ranked 90th on the general leaderboard and a team ranked 20th, not qualified seems weird, but it already happens with the season 10 rules. It's because of the intra-race competition on the ladder.

The other argument is that it "forces" people to play other races. It's an incentive, but it is not forced. Nobody can force anyone to play any team they do not want to play.

What do we do now?

As explained in the official announcement, we'll switch back to the season 10 "wildcard" rules for season 11 and now apply a minimum delay of two weeks before a new season to announce any rule changes.

We've opened this topic to explain the logic behind this contested change. Please tell us what you think of a potential tweak to this rule, but also what we could do to improve the Champion Ladder! We don't expect a sudden agreement with the wildcard change, but it's important to open a dialogue about it - what we should have done earlier.

Please keep in mind that we're looking for constructive criticism. Ad-hominem attacks won't help us shape a better competition.

Here is my wildcard suggestion that sort of implements your concerns of having 4 teams from every race qualify over a 3 season spread. I call it that rather than a pure intra-race competition because that is really the end goal that seems to be sought. That goal can be achieved without discounting as many races as often however.

Here goes nothing:

Take the top 8 wildcards out of the current format for season 1 of the 3 season spread. Those 8 races cannot qualify as wildcard the next 2 seasons. Season 2, take the top 8 wildcards that aren't those races and those races cannot qualify as wildcards the next season. Season 3, take the top 8 wildcards from the remaining 8 races. That way, you get 4 total qualifiers from each race over 3 seasons without completely dictating which races they will be. This structure still creates one season with predetermined wildcards, but it's a compromise that hits your goals and allows a little more inter-race competitiveness which the player base seems to prefer.

You want to increase diversity by giving 8 specific races an extra slot? That has exactly the opposite effect, decreasing diversity by focusing the players into that third of the available teams, unless you specifically select the least played races rather than cycling trough. Doing so would be even worse, it would SIGNIFICANTLY lower the player and team quality in the playoffs, making it less interesting.

I can understand the fluff around having every race be represented in the tournament however it doesn't mean they have get out of the open play. In fact not getting out of open play is more inline with BB fluff. I personally have no problem seeing a disproportionate representation by T1 races making it into the knockout round as long as I see high level play and we preserve the purity of competition. For me diversity without merit equals mediocrity.

Anyways I'm glad the rules have been rolled back to season X format and considering the options available it's the best of both worlds where at least 8 top qualifiers make it into the knockout tournament.

BB has grown up and online tournaments stress tests shows that rules that were designed for table top format don't work that well when coaches can play 25+ games over 5 days. Thus if we want diversity within our flagship tournament then the long term goal should be to ensure the races are closer to parity. Our main goal should be to growing the online community and have BB taken seriously as a competitive online game. If it isn't then I think the CCL is missing out on a very good opportunity.

It has always and will always be the case: bash teams will always be played more in general.

That is only true because the method of long-term attrition has never changed. So long as you leave it as is, bash will always be played more in general. That does not mean, however, that matchmaking is forever destined to be bash heavy regardless of any alterations. Most people who play in CCL have no hope of qualifying for the cup, so changing the rules about which rosters the 8 additional slots go to will not alter diversity in the qualification period, only slightly alter it at the cup level.

If you want to see a dramatic shift away from bash, run CCL as a rez environment with progression. With all teams being equally durable there will be no incentive to focus heavily on the three bash (with claw, especially) staples: durability, sustainable development, and effectiveness against durable, sustainable teams (other bash). Likewise, given the lack of danger to your team's effectiveness associated with playing matches, there's an incentive to play more matches as every match is more development. Currently, each match is a gamble, not only that you might lose a match and decrease your record, but also that your team might be damaged going into the cup, should you qualify.

The other argument is that it "forces" people to play other races. It's an incentive, but it is not forced. Nobody can force anyone to play any team they do not want to play.

With so few people actually expecting to make it to the cup, I think it's safe to say that nobody is feeling forced.

The issue with diversity at the cup level is that the effectiveness of teams still remains an issue there - the cup is inter-race not intra-race. You can be the best fling coach and still have little hope of winning the cup. If you want THAT to change then you need to adjust how the cup is being played.

There are several reasons why I think this would be a bad change. Of course I can see there are some positives, but overall I dislike this idea.

Issue 1: The obvious potential for a player to finish well and get screwed over even more often(of course it can always happen but the current system at least provides the best safety net while still keeping race variety). For instance finish 2nd place on the overall ladder and not qualify because 1st place was their same race and that race wasn't randomly chosen for that season. That seems like a huge injustice for someone to achieve that accomplishment and not get a shot at the money. If wildcards are not protecting that guy, I kinda am just left wondering, why have wildcards at all? If not to protect someone who spent 6 weeks grinding and did better than almost everybody else on the ladder by finishing in the top 8 2nd place finishers, why have em at all? May as well remove them if we're abandoning that goal.

Issue 2: The quality of the playoffs. I'm not sure how many people here watch or care about the actual playoffs? It even screws things up for the participants. From a viewer perspective putting in statistically worse performing teams can only make the viewer experience worse and have more easily predictable and unexciting games. An exciting playoff atmosphere with great competitive games can only be a positive and encourage more people to try champs when they see those games and get invested. From a participants perspective it leads to even more instances of someone getting a free run through the first couple rounds against random stunty team and random tier 2 team while someone else spends their first couple rounds randomly matched against Nurgle and Chorfs. Again, yes these things all exist as possibilities in the current format, but that doesn't make multiplying those possibilities to an even greater extent a good thing. That is still a negative being more present than before.

Issue 3: I don't believe this change actually accomplishes anything. Giving underworld or vampires or halfings or any weaker team a slot doesn't encourage more people to try to qualify with them. People will just choose the lizards or chaos or whatever strong races get that seasons extra qualifier. It will tunnel people into an even more isolated grouping of the strong teams while not moving anyone into the weak teams. This is of course my opinion. But I think the proof is in the fact that the weaker races are already LESS contested and therefore easier to qualify with because you have less competition for them, yet people still aren't going crazy to snatch them up. For many players in a competitive ladder they are gonna wanna spend their 6 weeks playing something they can win and compete on more consistently, not ogres. No incentive is going to change that, at least certainly not one extra wildcard for said race as the incentive. If you want people to not play tons of chaos or chorfs or whatever compared to other races, the only way to achieve that is balance unfortunately. Rez is one form of balance, race changes are another, but ultimately as long as we're in this format with this balance they are going to be a popular because people can enjoy them more easily on a game to game basis without getting dumpstered.

I think the most "fair" system would be a split between these where say 4 or 6 are the top 2nd place teams, and then 4/2 are chosen races. But this doesn't work because the timespan to cycle through the races would be enormous, so we're left having to choose. Which, I believe if we're left having to choose between one or the other, the wildcard selection that protects the players putting out the very best efforts and the one that also protects the largest group linked to champion playoffs, the spectators.

A suggestion that I've done virtually zero strategizing or poking at to see if viable...

If we want a 32 team playoff for the ultimate resolution of a Champs Season. What about:

Top player from each race qualifies (24).
Second best from each race qualifies (24 more).
Creates a field of 48 teams
Top 16 players get a first round bye.

Round one is 32 players, yielding 16 winners.

Those 16 winners then face the top 16 off their bye week (giving them a reward for being in the top 16, regardless of race, that refreshes any MNGs they might have had from the final game of the ladder).

If you really wanted to get tricky - you could even make the two 2 fling/gobbo teams play play each other in that first round to ensure two stunty teams advance to round two (if you were a person who cared about that for some reason... I am not) - this assumes that neither flings/gobbos would be cracking the top 16, which i expect would always be the case. but who knows?

This allows for equal representation from each race, but also makes the top 16 coaches feel like maybe their grinding efforts are somewhat more rewarded with the first round by (that doesnt absolve them from still needing to win the same number of games to take the pot as they currently would).

The other, more unlikely, suggestion I'd have is that you (Cyanide) produce a really awesome custom kit for every race that you can only earn by qualifying with that team. That will be enough of a draw for some of the regulars, I expect, to mix it up every season to try to unlock the kit on additional teams. But yeah. That requires extra art time, and whatnot. So I expect that's a nonstarter right now.

If you want to see a dramatic shift away from bash, run CCL as a rez environment with progression. With all teams being equally durable there will be no incentive to focus heavily on the three bash (with claw, especially) staples: durability, sustainable development, and effectiveness against durable, sustainable teams (other bash). Likewise, given the lack of danger to your team's effectiveness associated with playing matches, there's an incentive to play more matches as every match is more development. Currently, each match is a gamble, not only that you might lose a match and decrease your record, but also that your team might be damaged going into the cup, should you qualify.

I agree with you that having a rez environment with progression will likely encourage those who can to play more matches. I can't see how more matches could be a bad thing for Focus/Cyanide or most players, but it's not obvious to me how it might affect the types of matches we will see.

Would we end up with a lot of 100+ match superteams with 10 legendary players? If we did, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Since the seasons start over with fresh teams after each season the impact is limited from season to season. I'm just not sure if we would end up with a bunch of matches of 3000+ vs 3000+ TV teams. I don't know if I would enjoy that or not! I'm certainly not against it as an idea since it can be changed back if the player base doesn't like it. But it doesn't feel like the BB I know and love.

As many have already said I do not feel this will change the scenario of the current champion ladder. Players who want to play the same old bash teams will not suddenly change to the chosen wild card teams, even be aware of the change or even care about qualifying. So whilst its good to say that this is an incentive I feel like there is little evidence to suggest any people at all will change the races they play. What I do think however is that those who care about qualifying and winning the competition will focus in on a team like dwarves who have a strong match up vs UW, zons and the 2 elf teams from the wildcard races because suddenly they have a lot more favourable match ups in the cup.

If what people want to see is greater variation in the playoff then I believe this should be earned. One way of doing this would be to have the top 16 2nd place races play a game vs each other to decide the top 8 that make the cup. This might pit some of the strong teams against eachother or give a chance for a kislev/UW/vamps with a goood team and coach a chance to topple teams that naturally get a better record. Of course I understand if an idea involving more scheduled games is not on the table but I feel its important that teams earn their place in the playoffs and any chance to pack the playoffs full off better coaches and teams creates a greater spectacle for participants and viewers which would be damaged by diluting the pool with teams that aren't up to scratch.

Another idea (yes it will pit different races against eachother but is that a sin?) that I think will create more variety would be to group teams into say 8 groups of 3 or 6 groups of 4 to compete for that wild card spot
e.g.
Necromantic
Amazons
Khemri
Ogres

could be one group and the highest ranked 2nd place race of those 4 would take that wild card spot. This might be too complicated and pitting races against achother in any manner seems unpopular

I'm just not sure if we would end up with a bunch of matches of 3000+ vs 3000+ TV teams. I don't know if I would enjoy that or not! I'm certainly not against it as an idea since it can be changed back if the player base doesn't like it.

I don't know either. I suspect at a certain point more TV is just bloat and thus, there won't be a perpetually linear relationship between TV and match advantage... even if there isn't, the number of coaches willing or even capable of playing the number of matches needed to create such teams is going to be limited.

I think it's "sound" rather than "feel" since we've never actually tried it. I suspect that in reality it won't feel any different other than having your opponents focus on scoring rather than protecting their players or hurting yours while ignoring scoring. In the long run, of course... I don't think people's mindset would shift overnight.

we could also stay on topic i'm sure there is a way to make a topic to talk about rez format.

i'm not a fan of the idea of having pre determined wild cards by any means... the highest ranked second place teams should get them.... there's not 8 teams that dominate those spots so there would be diversity in there although i'm sure we will always have a chorf chaos and necro team and never a goblin or halfling team there is diversity... and better than forcing teams into the play offs that have nothing to do there...

in my opinion the play offs are about competition... pre determined wild cards take a big slice out of that cake

I share the sentiment expressed by many others.
This wild card change won’t suddenly make 2nd tier teams more played, and on top of failing in the purpose will even degrade the PO, rendering it even more random that they already are at the moment.

I don’t think it’s really feasible to have the team variety you aim for, unless adding money prizes for all team qualification spots is an option.
But even then it seems farfetched.

the highest ranked second place teams should get them.... there's not 8 teams that dominate those spots so there would be diversity in there although i'm sure we will always have a chorf chaos and necro team and never a goblin or halfling team there is diversity... and better than forcing teams into the play offs that have nothing to do there...

Certain rosters are better suited to holding those higher ranked slots than others, but there are ways to tell who the top performers are while correcting for roster differences. In doing so, any of the 24 rosters might qualify to be in those final 8 slots, including tier 3 teams, based solely on exceptional play by those 8 coaches.

The only problem with such a system is that there would be no way to use the in-game rankings to instantly tell who is going to qualify ahead of time. The determination would be based on standardized ranking metrics (taking the mean ranking score for all the teams of a given roster that have played, say, 24 or more games this season, then using the standard deviation of those scores to assign every team a Z-score based on their own roster's distribution. That z-score would then be used across all rosters to determine the best 8 performers of the season that aren't already going to the cup).

The benefit of such a system would be to reward the best coaches with cup slots, in addition to the top team of each roster.

I'd like to know why Netheos/Cyanide consider team diversity to be a goal in itself. Surely the important thing is for the players to enjoy the game. I think if you must insist on diversity then you must have some sort of measure of that diversity you are trying to achieve.

Currently Orcs and Chaos are most played at ~3500 games per season with most races at around ~1500 games. I would consider that actually quite good already.

Bear in mind that even if you got more people to play teams such as Halflings, they would still be rarely seen above low TV due to the nature of that team's roster.

One thing that could be done, is to run a smaller separate "stunty" cup that is contested between the "tier 3" teams: Halflings, Ogres and Goblins. This could have a smaller € prize or just be for Cyans. It would run concurrently with the regular Champions Cup.

I preferred the previous wildcard rules as they increased the number of "good" qualification spots. They don't dictate which teams are "good" either, so it won't always be the same teams getting two qualification spots. It means the required score to qualify if more stable.

Champions ladder will never be perfect, although the teams compete intra-racially, the actual games you get are a lottery and some people will simply have had an easier list of opponents. In fact it would be impossible to achieve the 75%+ winrate needed for qualification playing competent opponents. It would be better to have a variation of ELO ranking in terms of generating and rewarding competitive match-ups but the only way to get that would be a res format without progression and I think progression is a key part of bloodbowl.

I'd like to know why Netheos/Cyanide consider team diversity to be a goal in itself. Surely the important thing is for the players to enjoy the game.

Pretty much every matchmaking environment we've seen has has a very large skew towards bash. A similar skew is there in all open environments (even FUMBBL R and Auld World on BB1), but it is far less prominent, with teams such as DE being played plenty too (and we see that in CCL as well). One of the most regular complaints about matchmaking environments has, historically, been that you get nothing but CPOMB teams in the more developed areas and that's something we (the admin team) want to avoid. Team diversity appears to be linked to player enjoyment, but that's clearly very hard (if not impossible) to quantify.

Percentage of games played per race as a proportion of all games, PC CCL S10

Clearly nobody wants to force anyone to play a race they don't want to play (through, e.g., quotas or limits), so incentives to play other races are used such as it being an intra-race ladder and an inter-race playoff, and resets each season (due to bash teams being perceived to take longer to develop). The point of the change was solely to prevent diluting the already-existing incentives to play other races by creating an increased incentive to play a "top" race which is more likely to regularlty take a top-8 slot. There's no intent to create absolute parity of race representation with in the ladder or anything like it, and I'm as sure as anyone else that this can't be done without hefty changes to the format (e.g. non-prog rez, which you mention) or a total rework of the rosters or the game itself (which is a whole different board game!).

The premise is that i would like to see, or to play if i am able to, high level playoffs, and i really really would like to see more race diversity in the ladder... The problem is that those two are completly different issues.
Playoffs must be a thing for best teams and best coaches: I really don't care to see a chaos dwarf team with more than 40 games under his belt make a pitch clear against the top ranked ogre or goblin team, with perhaps 13 games played. It's not even fair cause this kind of game is substantially a free turn and an ssp binge, while maybe the next opponent of this lucky team has lost 2 or 3 important players against the top chaos team in the previous turn.
So i think the top 32 teams (better, top 32 players) of the ladder must play the playoffs without race distinction, also if they are 32 chaos teams.
But i have said that i also complain about the poor diversity...well, in this bashy format the only solution i see to increase it is...PRIZES. It could been interesting if the top ranked for each race at the end of the ladder win something, for example 30 euro and 50 cyans (or 100 euro and no cyans if Cyanide prefer...;-)).
Maybe this can also encourage the top teams to play some more games and don't sit on their record without play a game for the last 20 days...

Clearly nobody wants to force anyone to play a race they don't want to play (through, e.g., quotas or limits), so incentives to play other races are used such as it being an intra-race ladder and an inter-race playoff, and resets each season (due to bash teams being perceived to take longer to develop). The point of the change was solely to prevent diluting the already-existing incentives to play other races by creating an increased incentive to play a "top" race which is more likely to regularlty take a top-8 slot. There's no intent to create absolute parity of race representation with in the ladder or anything like it, and I'm as sure as anyone else that this can't be done without hefty changes to the format (e.g. non-prog rez, which you mention) or a total rework of the rosters or the game itself (which is a whole different board game!).

There is nothing to suggest wildcards will influence people's choice in race. Even if it did this is likely to be a small percentage of games as it would only be an incentive to those who care about qualifying (which is very few).
Where the logic of this argument falls down is it assumes that more people will play different races if given this incentive or that people focusing on the playoffs (the only people likely to shift races) will play anything but the top races to try and win the cup.

If people want to play one of the low played races there is already incentive enough in terms of qualifying in that the records of T2/T3 races is abysmal and we see many low tv teams with poor records enter the playoffs as a result. If playoff berth was any factor in how much teams were played there would atleast be some competition for these playoff spots

There is nothing to suggest wildcards will influence people's choice in race. Even if it did this is likely to be a small percentage of games as it would only be an incentive to those who care about qualifying (which is very few).
Where the logic of this argument falls down is it assumes that more people will play different races if given this incentive or that people focusing on the playoffs (the only people likely to shift races) will play anything but the top races to try and win the cup.

That's entirely fair. I know from running previous competitions that having all races able to get to the playoffs does incentivise people to play the less-played races more(*), but that does not necessarily extend to the wildcards since we already have those less-played races represented. It's entirely possible I was taking the logic further than was appropriate.

(*) In the first BB1 world cup, iirc, we took the top team of each race from ladder competitions - the playoffs allowed people to choose a new race, though, so there was no "penalty" for getting to the finals with a weaker team. That could be something we could consider here, ofc, if people aren't particularly fussed about playing their teams in the finals. There are positives and negatives to that as well as multiple ways of doing it.

Hi, first i like that you have been able to go back, following the strong and bad feedback of the community.

One way to do it simply would be to :
-remove all wild cards and simply takes the 24 best teams of each races to the tournament.
-take the 8th lowest ranked races of the season directly to the 2nd round of the knock-out tournament.

-it would (slightly) improve their chances.
-it could maybe bring more coaches to try to qualify with other races that those who have more probabilities to get 2 spot because
1.there would be one spot only, even for chaos, so sorry.
2.could be wise to wait second round of tournament and let these CD and Nurgle teams have an explanationtogether before meeting them^^.

One way to do it simply would be to :
-remove all wild cards and simply takes the 24 best teams of each races to the tournament.
-take the 8th lowest ranked races of the season directly to the 2nd round of the knock-out tournament.